Babbit eBook

“It’s certainly better for them than going
to roadhouses and smoking and drinking!”

“I don’t know whether it is or not!
Personally I don’t see a whole lot of difference.
In both cases they’re trying to get away from
themselves—­most everybody is, these days,
I guess. And I’d certainly get a whole
lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance,
even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar
was too tight, and feeling too scared to spit, and
listening to Opal chewing her words.”

“I’m sure you do! You’re very
fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of them
while I was away!”

“Look here! You been doing a hell of a
lot of insinuating and hinting around lately, as if
I were leading a double life or something, and I’m
damn sick of it, and I don’t want to hear anything
more about it!”

“Why, George Babbitt! Do you realize what
you’re saying? Why, George, in all our
years together you’ve never talked to me like
that!”

“It’s about time then!”

“Lately you’ve been getting worse and
worse, and now, finally, you’re cursing and
swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so
ugly and hateful—­I just shudder!”

“Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn’t
shouting, or swearing either.”

“I wish you could hear your own voice!
Maybe you don’t realize how it sounds.
But even so—­You never used to talk like
that. You simply couldn’t talk this
way if something dreadful hadn’t happened to
you.”

His mind was hard. With amazement he found that
he wasn’t particularly sorry. It was only
with an effort that he made himself more agreeable:
“Well, gosh, I didn’t mean to get sore.”

“George, do you realize that we can’t
go on like this, getting farther and farther apart,
and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don’t
know what’s going to happen.”

He had a moment’s pity for her bewilderment;
he thought of how many deep and tender things would
be hurt if they really “couldn’t go on
like this.” But his pity was impersonal,
and he was wondering, “Wouldn’t it maybe
be a good thing if—­Not a divorce and all
that, o’ course, but kind of a little more independence?”

While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in
a dreadful silence.

CHAPTER XXXI

I

When he was away from her, while he kicked about
the garage and swept the snow off the running-board
and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented,
he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared
out at his wife, and thought fondly how much more
lasting she was than the flighty Bunch. He went
in to mumble that he was “sorry, didn’t
mean to be grouchy,” and to inquire as to her
interest in movies. But in the darkness of the
movie theater he brooded that he’d “gone
and tied himself up to Myra all over again.”
He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Tanis
Judique. “Hang Tanis anyway! Why’d
she gone and got him into these mix-ups and made him
all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too many complications!
Cut ’em out!”